NBC’s parent company, NBCUniversal, announced today that they would be shutting down the NBC Sports Network, or NBCSN channel by the end of the year, according to a memo obtained by the Wall Street Journal.
The reasoning given by the company is that, obviously, the age of streaming has kept cable under duress for quite some time, not having the Olympics hurt NBC badly this year, and while NBCSN has decidedly broadcast quality production, they’ve been getting reamed in ratings in comparison to ESPN/FOX, and so they plan to consolidate much of their programming on the channel onto either mainline NBC, to the USA Network, or to their streaming service Peacock, which they’ve been attempting to build up fast in this new world, in what they referred to as “Reverse Segmentation.